Mid-week treat was just the job

AT­MOS­PHERE: Marzia, had enough sense to ask if that’s what we wanted. Nice one. The older ones among us didn’t need draw­ing stuff to keep us oc­cu­pied. We were go­ing to be busy try­ing to get through the moun­tain of food that had ar­rived. A Mex­i­can theme seemed to have bro­ken out. The loon was well-chuffed with his chicken que­sadilla. Tri­an­gles of tor­tilla were stuffed with ten­der, spiced chicken, onion and pep­per, while the cheese brought a smokey flavour. I thought the rice that came with the dish looked a bit dried out, as if it had spent too long un­der a hot lamp, but he said it was fine. Mrs B, mean­while, was wide-eyed at the heap of veg that came with her veg­etable fa­jita (£11.99) All that tomato, green beans, mush­rooms, baby corn, pep­pers, and broc­coli ac­tu­ally had her con­ced­ing de­feat – but not un­til she’d had a good go at rolling it in the four tor­tillas and smoth­er­ing it in gua­camole, salsa and sour cream. A slice of lime helped give

along by staff who have clearly been told not to let that smile drop for a sec­ond. Which, it must be said, does make for a friendly and vi­brant at­mos­phere. This was a fam­ily “treat tea” to mark the fact one of the gang of four was about to head off on her own wee hol­i­day with rel­a­tives. So, tucked into a booth, sip­ping our bot­tom­less Cokes, we treated our­selves to a huge chicken na­chos shar­ing plat­ter to start. This was spot-on ... with each chip in­di­vid­u­ally slathered in cheese, ten­der chicken and fiery jalapeno – none of that hit-and-miss non­sense you of­ten get. Mean­while, the hol­i­day girl was get­ting stuck into her kids’ juicy chicken fin­gers while wax­ing lyri­cal about the high qual­ity of TGI Fri­day’s draw­ing stuff. Her dish ar­rived with our starters be­cause our smil­ing waitress,